Withought judging how the comparison is for you I should say, that if you like ribbon sound, both (Superlux R102 and sE X1R with Fethead) are very viable ways to obtain good ribbon sound with low noise and no issues of preamp impedance or clean gain, so you don't need to involve with them into specilized boutique microphone preamps. Especially it surprised me how quiet the Superlux is.

Here the comparisons. In each video both takes are recorded simultenously, no processing apart from mixdown to 48kHz/16bit for video.

Thank you for posting - this is another one in a long line of interesting and informative tests.

Both these mics sound surprisingly good for the price. I'm still very thankful for you for turning me on to ribbon mics, by the way! Not many people are using them to record classical guitar, but the sound really is great. I like the ribbon sound much better than for example the SDC mics you've been testing lately.

Thanks for your feedback, Tuomas ... It all boils down to the issue of listening habits. Because Condensers are so predominant these days people often think something is lacking in ribbons instead to realize that something has been artificially added in condensers that is not their - they are like an additional higher harmonics plugin in your daw.

Anyway, luckily everybody can do as they please, we're fortunate not to live in a condenser microphone dictatorship

Music is a big continent with different landscapes and corners. Some of them I do visit frequently, some from time to time and some I know from hearsay only ...

For me the Fethead offers less noise at the price of narrowing the gap to a condenser, it sounds a bit more artificial for me. But for all the cases when you don't have a preamp that is suitable for ribbons impedance wise, I think the Fetheads do a marvelous job in allowing you to exploit the full potntial of a ribbbon that otherwise could sound a bit flat.

Music is a big continent with different landscapes and corners. Some of them I do visit frequently, some from time to time and some I know from hearsay only ...